Ann Arbor moves to ban bottled water sales from city events

Michigan is known as the Great Lakes State since it borders on four of the five Great Lakes. Much of the state's economy is dependent at least in part on the supply of water from the lakes either to feed industry or tourism. For years that has been concern in the state about large scale bottlers taking the water from the lakes to package and sell at inflated prices. This has been a particular concern in recent years with dropping lake water levels.
Now the city of Ann Arbor and the state government are fighting back. The city council recently passed a resolution barring city vendors from selling commercial bottled water at city events. The city will start selling reusable water bottles that can be filled with tap water. Meanwhile the state is dropping the threshold for state approval to withdraw water from 2 million gallons a day to 1 million. Municipalities, utilities and large industrial companies will be required to implement water conservation policies. Needless to say bottlers are not happy about these policies and continue to claim that bottled water is healthier in spite of many studies showing that it is usually no better than most municipal tap water and often worse. Regardless of the qualities of bottled water, the fact is the huge quantities of plastic packaging and transportation consume a lot of energy needlessly.

[Source: Ann Arbor News]